Tag: Brazil - Page 12

From the top of Rio de Janeiro's towering mountain of Corcovado, at the feet of the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue, the high rise urban centers neatly tucked along the shoreline are dwarfed by the rugged natural skyline. On these

If only Visa treated my debt the way the U.S. is treating debt from developing countries. On Friday, the Obama Administration announced that it will cancel debt from Brazil in exchange for forest protection. The U.S. has done the same

Traveling through the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, one might expect to run across many strange and fascinating things -- but an American ghost town probably wouldn't be one of them. Yet deep in the world's largest rainforest lies

853 days ago, Ed Stafford took the first steps of what would become a record-breaking trek, following the length of the Amazon river as it winds its way across the South American continent. After experiencing countless

It will be another four months until leaders from around the world gather for COP16 in Mexico, but expectations for the meeting's outcome are hardly optimistic. After last year's UN climate summit in Copenhagen produced a less-than-ideal result, the

Traveling from the heart of the Amazon rainforest to the Tropical savannah climate of the Brazilian capital of Brasilia offers a lesson in contrasts -- patches of forest and deforestation are replaced with monolithic white government buildings, poor

Thousands of years ago, a tribe of indians settled near modern day Santarem, nestled on the banks of where the Tapajós River joins Amazon in the state Pará, Brazil, living harmoniously in the region's lush rainforest. Time, however, have not been kind

The tiny town of Urucu, deep in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, could easily be seen as some sort of eco-paradise. Although it's surrounded by lush rainforest and is accessible only by boat or plane, Urucu features all the

On the Average Year, Only About 10 Dead Penguins are Found in that AreaOver just the past 10 days, around 500 dead penguins have washed up on beaches in the Sao Paolo state of Brazil. What killed the black-and-white birds is still a

Perhaps the most striking thing about flying over the Amazon rainforest is how untouched it looks; there's no checkered quilt of farmland or veins of highway. From horizon to horizon it's nothing but an impossibly vast sea of green, inspiring the same

If you thought unscrupulous logging practices were the only threat to the world's largest rainforest, then think again. According to a new study, one extremely powerful storm in 2005 resulted in the deaths of an estimated 441 million

When police arrived to a tunnel in downtown Porto Alegre, Brazil, having received word that some youths were tagging its walls with graffiti, it must have seemed like a pretty clear case of vandalism. But after a few of the

Rio has been going through a bit of a rough patch lately- it's been set on fire by a hot air balloon and hit hard by deadly torrential rains. But the city is far from beat: a key player in Brazil's plan to drastically reduce

Brazil's proposed construction of what would be the third largest hydroelectric dam on the planet has drawn ire from environmental groups the world over. The planned dam at Belo Monte, protestors say, will flood and destroy much of

Photo via Global Voices
Rio de Janeiro is a city known for its spirited festivities and all-night celebrations, but part of those revelries are being blamed for inadvertently setting a blaze on one of the city's hillside national parks over the weekend,

A new report in the Center for Disease Control's journal Emerging Infectious Diseases highlights one more bad consequence of Amazon deforestation: In areas that have been cleared of trees incidence of malaria increase nearly